
Show Notes
The salary conversation is one of the most anxiety-producing moments in any job search — and when you're coming from redundancy, it's even more loaded. Your last salary exists but it may not reflect what the market currently pays. The pressure of needing a role changes what you're willing to say out loud. And the advice available is either negotiation-bro overconfident or so hedged it's useless.
This episode unpacks why this conversation is specifically harder during redundancy than a standard job move, the traps people fall into that are entirely understandable given the circumstances and what useful preparation looks like before you're ever asked the question. That includes where to research a credible UK salary range, what to say when they ask first and you're not ready to commit, the difference between what you need and what you want, and why knowing your household floor number before the conversation is more useful than any negotiation script.
Connect with others on the same redundancy journey at www.theinvisiblequeue.co.uk Find the redundancy runway calculator or contact the show at www.thenowwhat.co.uk.
More from Now What? - Life after redundancy
After the best part of a year and somewhere north of a hundred applications, I've been offered a role and this episode is the honest version of what that actually feels like, recorded a while before I've even started, with none of the hindsight smoothed in yet.
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Most people navigating redundancy have spent years being good at their jobs. The doing was never really the problem. The bit that catches people out is the presenting — interview panels, networking rooms, video calls with recruiters — where suddenly you have to articulate your value out loud, to strangers, in real time, without your brain quietly filing everything under unavailable.
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